Jerry Podair, professor of history and Robert S. French Professor of American Studies at Lawrence University in Appleton, said the 1940s are a tough decade to talk about....

"The '40s are a fractured decade obviously because of WWII, which in the United States lasted from 1941 to 1945, and then the post-war era from 1945 on," he said. "It's almost like you're talking about two different decades."...

"I think it's possible to say someone who grew up in Appleton in the 1930s would spend his whole life there," he said. "But in the 1940s the same person was much more likely to move to an army base in Kentucky or move out to California because that's where the jobs were in the defense industry."...